p. 109: And is not the primordial version of this substitution by means of which 'somebody else does it for me' the very substitution of a signifier for the subject? In such a substitution lies the basic, constitutive feature of the symbolic order: a signifier is precisely an object-thing which substitutes for me, acts in my place.
p. 111: If we radicalize the relationship of substitution (i.e. the first aspect of the notion of fetishism) in this way, then the connections between the two aspects, the opposition 'persons versus things', their relation of substitution ('things instead of people', or one person instead of another, or a signifier instead of the signified), and the opposition 'structure versus one of its elements', becomes clear: the differential/formal structure occluded by the element-fetish, can emerge only if the gesture of substitution has already occurred. In other words, the structure is always, by definition, a signifying structure, a structure of signifiers which are substituted for the signified content, not a structure of the signified. For the differential/formal structure to emerge, the real has to redouble itself in the symbolic register; a reduplicatio has to occur, on account of which things no longer count as what they directly 'are,' but only with regard to their symbolic place. This primordial substitution of the big Other, the Symbolic Order, for the Real of the immediate Life-Substance [....] gives rise to $, to the 'barred subject' who is then 'represented' by the signifiers--that is, on whose behalf signifiers 'act', who acts through signifiers....
p. 113: This paradox of interpassivity, of believing or enjoying through the other, also opens up a new approach to aggressivity: aggressivity is provoked in a subject when the other subject, through which the first subject believed or enjoyed, does something which disturbs the functioning of this transference. Look, for example, at the attitude of some Western Leftist academics towards the disintegration of Yugoslavia: since the fact that the people of ex-Yugoslavia rejected ('betrayed') Socialism disturbed the belief of these academics--that is, prevented them from persisting in their belief in 'authentic' self-management Socialism through the Other which realizes it--everyone who did not share their Yugo-nostalgic attitude was dismissed as a proto-Fascist nationalist.
pp. 114-115: *In the case of commodity fetishism, our belief is laid upon the Other: I think I do not believe, but I believe through the Other. The gesture of criticism here consists in the assertion of identity: no, it is you who believe through the Other (in the theological whimsies of commodities, in Santa Claus...).
*In the case of a video recorder viewing and enjoying a film for me (or of the canned laughter, or of the weepers who cry and mourn for you, or of the Tibetan prayer wheel) it is the other way round: you think you enjoyed the show, but the Other did it for you. The gesture of criticism here is that, no, it was not you who laughed, it was the Other (the TV set) who did it.
Is not the key to this distinction that we are dealing here with the opposition between belief and jouissance, between the Symbolic and the Real? In the case of (symbolic) belief, you disavow the identity (you do not recognize yourself in the belief which is yours); in the case of (real) jouissance, you misrecognize the decentrement in what you (mis)perceive as 'your own' jouissance. Perhaps the fundamental attitude which defines the subject is neither that of passivity nor that of autonomous activity, but precisely that of interpassivity. This interpassivity is to be opposed to the Hegelian List der Vernunft ('cunning of Reason'): in the case of the 'cunning of Reason', I am active through the other--that is, I accede to the other the passive aspect (of enjoying), while I can remain actively engaged (I can continue to work in the evening, while the VCR passively enjoys for me; I can make financial arrangements for the deceased's fortune while the weepers mourn for me). This allows us to propose the notion of false activity: you think you are active, while your true position, as embodied in the fetish, is passive....
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